WG Grace

  On their way back home, the Nottinghamshire squad met the Yorkshire team travelling south for their own match against Grace and Co. The Midlanders warned them that W.G. was in top form but the Yorkshiremen were unimpressed. Tom Emmett is said to have retorted: ‘The big’un has exhausted himself and cannot do the century trick three times in succession.’ If he did, he added he’d personally shoot him, and anticipated the approval of his fellow pros. He ought to have packed his gun.

  The match was played at Cheltenham. ‘A fresh breeze from the hills tempered the blazing heat, and the beautiful College ground had seldom appeared to greater advantage,’ wrote one scribe. W.G. reckoned the pitch was as good as he had ever played on and Gloucestershire had first use of it. With 521 runs under his belt in the previous six days, he carried on where he had left off against Notts. ‘Though the bowling continued very good, all was of no avail against the skill of the great batsman,’ reported the Sportman’s correspondent. Grace batted untroubled throughout the first day, reaching his century soon after lunch with a blow over square leg off Tom Emmett on to the gymnasium roof, and hitting more sixes into the grandstand and on the main tent. At 5.30 p.m. he reached another double century and finished the day on 216 not out. The next morning it rained and play could not start until 1 p.m., giving Grace a rest. In the afternoon he added another century, running out of partners, to carry his bat for 318 out of a total of 528. ‘Goodness knows how many more he would have made had any of his side lived to keep him company,’ commented the Sporting Gazette.

  So total was his dominance that the Yorkshire bowlers fell out with one another. At one stage Allen Hill refused point-blank to be brought back by his captain Ephraim Lockwood. Emmett told Lockwood to insist that Hill bowled, upon which Hill turned on Emmett and growled: ‘Why don’t you bowl yourself? You’re frightened.’ The infuriated Emmett grabbed the ball – and bowled three wides in succession. (To be fair, Grace once noted that Emmett never seemed to know where he was bowling and could surprise the batsman with a straight one after spraying the ball all over the place.) So Grace had racked up 839 runs in eight days, a performance never equalled before or since, and between 3 and 19 August made 1,164. ‘C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre! might well Mr Grace’s opponents declare,’ wrote one journalist, ‘for when he once gets set no bowling at present to be had can get rid of him. Indeed it is growing to be a common opinion among spectators, that “Grace can get a score whenever he likes”.’

  His total for the month was 1,389, greater than any other batsman managed in the whole of the 1876 season. Grace’s aggregates that year were 2,622 first-class runs, average 62.42, 3,908 runs in all cricket, and 130 first-class wickets at 18.90 each. Just as important for him, Gloucestershire were county champions again.

  In the autumn of 1876, R.A. Fitzgerald, Grace’s comrade-in-arms in Canada, resigned through ill health from his post as secretary of MCC after a stint of thirteen years, and James Lillywhite led the fourth English tour of Australia, an entirely professional affair. It was most notable for Australia’s first victory over England, at Melbourne in March 1877.

  Nobody, not even W.G., could have equalled his achievements of 1876 and the summer of 1877 was bound to be something of an anticlimax. The figures tell it all: in thirty-seven first-class innings he made 1,474 runs at an average of only 39.83, though he was still comfortably the highest scorer in England. But his bowling more than compensated for his relatively lacklustre performances with the bat. It was a wet summer and accordingly the bowlers had the upper hand. W.G. finished with 179 wickets, which was to be the second highest of his long career, at an average of only 12.81.

  There was no doubt about his finest batting display in 1877: a superb 261 for the South v the North, a benefit match for the Cricketers’ Fund played between 31 May and 2 June at the Prince’s ground. It was one of the last big innings to be played there. It had formerly been Middlesex’s home ground but they had now decamped to Lord’s, and Prince’s, situated on a prime piece of building land at Hans Place, just off Sloane Street, was soon to fall to the developers; indeed, they were already nibbling away at the corners and reducing the size of the field of play. Grace’s double century was the highest individual score of the first-class season.

  He soon lost his opening partner, his cousin, W.R. Gilbert, run out for seven with the score on 27, and was joined at the wicket by Joseph Cotterill of Sussex, a brilliant batsman whose career (unlike Grace’s) was curtailed by the demands of medicine. Grace punished the North’s attack of Morley, Tye and Clayton to the tune of 90 out of 119–1 by lunch. At 3.20 p.m. he reached his century and carried on ruthlessly flogging the ball to all corners of the ground. Bell’s Life in London recorded: ‘The bowling was now fairly collared, the Champion apparently doing as he liked.’ Grace brought up his double century with an on-drive for three off Morley and then lost Cotterill, whose share of a stand of 281 was 88. At stumps, W.G. was undefeated on 252 out of 385–2, (Fred Grace 34 not out) but did not last much longer on Friday, a day affected by rain and wind, hitting a catch to mid-on. Fred went on to make 54 in the South’s 459 all out.

  Mrs Grace had made the journey to London to watch her sons play. She was sitting with a Dutch friend when an elderly clergyman sat himself down next to them and, assuming the two women, knew nothing about cricket or cricketers proceeded to deliver a running commentary on the match (the sort of neighbour with whom all cricket lovers will be familiar). Mrs Grace managed to conceal her identity even when the parson started to tell her all about her own son. Alas, his reaction when W.G. came over to greet his mother is not recorded.

  Meanwhile Gloucestershire were carrying all before them. It was their best season yet, winning seven out of eight matches and drawing the other, and for the second consecutive season they topped the unofficial county championship. They had an interesting new recruit: Billy Midwinter, the Victoria all-rounder whom Grace had got to know when he toured Australia four years previously. But by birth he was a Gloucestershire man: he had been born in 1851 in St Briavels, Gloucestershire, and was taken to Australia as a child. Now he was recruited by Gloucestershire and became, in a manner of speaking, the first overseas player in the county game, and the first professional to play for Gloucestershire. He was a hard-hitting batsman, a steady and effective medium-pace bowler, and a brilliant fielder.

  The county game was rapidly gaining in popularity with the public, who could identify with their own sides. It meant that the end was drawing near for the professional circuses, such as the United South and All England XI: the latter played their last game in 1877 and the writing was on the wall for the United South although they survived for a few seasons more. But cricket promoters still put together strange combinations to attract an audience, such as a Gloucestershire-Yorkshire XI which played the Rest of England at Lord’s on 17 and 18 July. W.G. hit 52 in the first innings and to mark his twenty-ninth birthday made a memorable century (110) in the second, including a six struck out of the ground into J.H. Dark’s garden (Dark was the former administrator of the ground).

  Gloucestershire’s finest moment came with a game arranged against a strong England side, a signal honour to be accorded to a county. Gloucestershire showed how much they deserved it by winning by five wickets. Grace took seven wickets in the game but perhaps his finest-ever performance with the ball came in his county’s game against Nottinghamshire at Cheltenham, the first time the Midlanders had played there. His match figures were 76–36–89–17 (9–55 and 8–34) and in Notts’ second innings he took seven wickets in seventeen balls without conceding a run, including three in one over, ‘entitling him to a new hat’ according to the local newspaper. But it was as much the manner in which he lured the opposition out that had affected the figures, startling though they were. He placed his brother Fred and cousin W.R. Gilbert as twin long-legs, and batsman after batsman contrived to hit the ball down their throats. The Notts captain, Richard Daft, berated his batsmen for falling for the Grace leg-tra
p in such a fashion, only to do exactly the same himself second ball. ‘Mr W.G. Grace’s performance with the ball was quite of an exceptional character,’ said the Bristol Evening News. ‘He took as many wickets as he scored runs.’ Therein may have lain his determination to do well with the ball for he had been given out in dubious circumstances, playing a ball from Morley to cover-point where Selby claimed the catch and W.G. was given out, ‘a decision which was questioned by several who declared the ball struck the ground before it reached him’.

  The next day W.G. laid waste Yorkshire at Clifton in similar manner, with a spell of 6–6 and a total of eight wickets in the innings. All season he skittled the opposition: in the South v North match at Lord’s he took 8–36 in the North’s second innings, for Gloucs v Surrey at Clifton, 5–26, and for MCC v Kent at Canterbury his figures were 6–19.

  The end of the 1877 season was a watershed not only for Grace but for English cricket. For more than a decade he had been a full-time cricketer during the season. Now belatedly he was to embark on the final, and most serious, lap of the much-prolonged studies that would at long last qualify him as a doctor. He was almost thirty and, in common with most sportsmen, his very greatest achievements were behind him, although he still had one truly astonishing season well ahead of him. Physically he had changed from the lithe young man of his late teens and early twenties. He was now assuming the girth and persona of grand old man of cricket, the image of him which prevails to the present day.

  His cricketing career was very nearly ended by a shooting accident in September 1877. Lord Westmoreland had invited him up to Apethorpe in Northamptonshire to play for the village side against Lord Exeter’s XI, a match the two peers took very seriously indeed. After the previous year’s defeat had been avenged thanks mainly to a century by W.G., a day’s shooting of partridge and hare followed. In the afternoon, W.G. unwisely moved ahead of the line of guns, unseen by the others. When the partridges were put up, he was right in the line of fire and was hit in the eye. Fortunately Fred Grace, a medical student, was on hand to take charge and bandage his brother, who was led away amid fears that the damage could be permanent. It was not. It is interesting to think of the number of great cricketers who suffered eye injuries, from shooting or traffic accidents, and whose game was never the same again – Ranji, the Nawab of Pataudi, Colin Milburn – and to ponder the fact that the great W.G. was only a whisker away from joining them.

  8 · GRACE THE CRICKETER

  WHAT was W.G. like as a batsman, bowler, fielder, captain? This is the most frustrating question that can be asked of all the great players of the pre-cinematic and pre-television age. Nowadays we are all experts (or we think we are) about every cricketer. We see them continually on television: we know that Greg Chappell and David Gower were the personification of elegance, that Viv Richards had such a superb eye that he could hit across the line and get away with it, that Brian Lara had both eye and elegance, that Denis Lillee’s and Michael Holding’s bowling actions were poetry in motion. The image most of us have of Ian Botham’s all-round brilliance actually depends on television, for most of us see far more cricket on TV than we can possibly do in the flesh. Going back to the 1930s and 1940s, there is enough cinema footage to get a good idea of Bradman’s footwork and remorseless accumulation of runs, of Hutton’s grace and poise, of Compton’s effervescence and brilliant unorthodoxy.

  THE BATSMAN

  There is some film footage of W.G. but it affords only a tantalising glimpse of him practising in late middle age. There is none of him in action out in the middle against real bowling. So we have to rely on the eyewitness accounts of those he played against. Fortunately, there exist enough of those to build up a good picture of the Doctor at the crease.

  First, his stance. No more detailed portrait has been presented than by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a keen club cricketer, played against Grace (like him, a doctor) and indeed once claimed his wicket. This was in the later stages of Grace’s career but many of Conan Doyle’s observations echoed earlier descriptions of Grace in his prime – and were worthy of Sherlock Holmes in the closeness of their scrutiny. Remember that Grace stood six ft 2 ½ in tall and from his mid-thirties onwards presented a vast bulk to the bowler.

  I do not know if he took the centre or the leg guard, or the point between them, but he actually stood very clear of his wicket, bending his huge shoulders and presenting a very broad face of the bat towards the bowler.

  It was not surprising that Conan Doyle was unsure about Grace’s guard. The great man was dismissive about the question: ‘It makes very little difference what guard you take,’ he once wrote. What mattered to him was that the batsman should stand ‘as near as you possibly can in the line of the wickets without getting your feet in front – in fact, your toes must be just clear of a line drawn from wicket to wicket.’ Contrary to Conan Doyle’s memory, he advocated positioning the back foot well inside the crease. He used to mark the line he had chosen with one of the bails.

  The novelist went on to describe Grace’s most characteristic movement, a defiant cocking of the left foot as the bowler approached the wicket. He ‘would slowly raise himself up to his height and draw back the blade of his bat, while his left toe would go upwards until only the heel of the foot remained upon the ground’. W.G. himself described the remarkable position of his left leg: ‘I prefer to place (it) about twelve inches in front of and nearly at right angles [my italics] to my other leg.’ It signalled aggression from the first.

  This posture is well captured in some brief film footage of Grace practising at Brighton, presumably around the turn of the century, as Ranji was filmed too. Wearing a round-topped straw hat, his flannels held up by a belt, W.G. is shown playing six shots, in front of a single stump and, just behind it, a seated row of appreciative men and small boys, all much more smartly dressed than would be the case today. There does not appear to be a net protecting them. W.G. plays two on-drives, an off-drive off the back foot straight at the cameraman, a couple of characteristic pushes to leg, also off the back foot, and a final rather ungainly back-foot off-side prod.

  In the first on-drive, his cocking of the left foot is most evident. Perhaps the most interesting feature of his stance revealed by the camera is a double take-back of the bat before the ball has been bowled, which is displayed in every shot. First, he picks it up to a position about level with his knee, holds it there momentarily, then takes the bat back as high as his shoulder before bringing it down for the shot. This double pick-up is not referred to in any literature but is clearly automatic. It contrasts strongly with Ranji’s pick-up, when the Jam Sahib is shown in the next frames, practising a couple of shots in front of the same stump. Unlike W.G. he does not bother with pads or gloves, and has not even removed his blazer. He picks the bat up with one flowing movement before unleashing a wristy off-drive and then a corking square cut. It is a fascinating glimpse of his lordly technique, while the overall impression W.G. leaves is one of workman-like efficiency.

  Conan Doyle went on:

  He gauged the pitch of the ball in an instant, and if it were doubtful played back rather than forward.

  R.A.H. Mitchell, who played with W.G. for the Gentlemen in the 1860s and went on to become a master at Eton, was quoted as saying that W.G. ‘never made great use of the back-stroke, which has been perfected since his time’, and Grace himself was of the ‘when in doubt, play forward’ school. But he was in fact the first batsman to combine both forward and back play with equal ease. In this respect, he invented modern batting, as C.L.R. James put it.

  Ranji (or possibly his ‘ghost’, C.B. Fry) was in no doubt about this:

  W.G … revolutionised batting. He turned it from an accomplishment into a science … Before W.G. there were two kinds – a batsman played a forward game or he played a back game. Each player, too, seems to have made a speciality of some particular stroke … It was bad cricket to hit a straight ball; as for pulling a slow long-hop, it was regarded as immoral. What W.
G. did was to unite in his mighty self all the good points of all the good players … He founded the modern theory of batting by making forward and back-play of equal importance, relying neither on the one nor on the other, but on both … I hold him to be, not only the finest player born or unborn, but the maker of modern batting. He turned an old one-stringed instrument into a many-chorded lyre. And, in addition, he made his execution equal his invention. All of us now have the instrument, but we lack his execution. It is not that we do not know, but that we cannot perform.

  Ranji was certainly being unduly modest, for no one played more beautiful music with the instrument he was bequeathed by W.G. Then he changed the metaphor:

  Before W.G., batsmen did not know what could be made of batting. The development of bowling has been natural and gradual; each great bowler has added his quota. W.G. discovered batting; he turned its narrow straight channels into one great winding river … The theory of modern batting is in all essentials the results of W.G.’s thinking and working on the game.

  Perhaps the most striking feature of his contemporaries’ recollections is the common consent that Grace was not a graceful batsman. Ranji defined it as elegantly as one of his cover drives: ‘What W.G. did was … to make utility the criterion of style.’ Canon Edward Lyttleton, a notably stylish batsman himself and captain of the 1878 Cambridge side which beat the Australians by an innings and 72 runs at Lord’s, agreed: ‘He was strangely lacking in attractiveness of style … The style was unattractive, not because it was laborious, but because the movements were ungainly.’

  Charles Francis, who played with Grace for the Gentlemen and toured North America with him, wrote in similar vein: ‘There was nothing very attractive in his style, which was quite different from that of anyone else. There was none of the finished and graceful wrist-play of an Alfred Lubbock or Alfred Lyttleton or Charlie Buller.’ These views were echoed by A.G. Powell, who watched him play for Gloucestershire many times and wrote an engaging little biography of the Grace brothers published in 1948: ‘There was … nothing about W.G.’s batting that you could describe as distinctive, save that he managed somehow to get nearly every ball in the middle of the bat, and you could no more associate a lucky snick through the slips or to leg with his batting than you could visualise Mendelssohn writing jazz.’